On the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol, just behind a large stone tablet etched with the Ten Commandments, is a grassy meadow designated for a second state-sanctioned project. This one, envisioned as a long wall of luscious green plants, will serve as Arkansas’s “Monument to Unborn Children.”

In 2023, an artist named Lakey Goff won a public contest to design the state’s official anti-abortion memorial. Her entry — which called for 1,400 plants and a Bible quotation, as well as the piped-in sounds of Arkansas waterfalls — stood out from a raft of more literal-minded entries featuring fetuses and infants. Ms. Goff has described her “living wall” as a gesture of reconciliation after decades of conflict over abortion policy.

“We’re not at war with each other anymore,” Ms. Goff said last year to the members of the state commission that chose her design. “This is about healing.”

But the monument remains unbuilt, months after work on it was supposed to start, not least because the debate over abortion has continued to rage. Even in one of the most conservative states in the nation, bitterness and discord remain, three years after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion. Healing seems like a distant dream.

Arkansas has long been hailed as the “most pro-life state in America” by Americans United for Life, a leading anti-abortion group. On June 24, 2022, the day that Roe was overturned, the state enacted one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

But last year, abortion rights activists gathered more than 100,000 signatures from many corners of the state for a ballot initiative that would have restored the right to an abortion up to 18 weeks after conception. Anti-abortion forces described the effort as “radical” and countered with a statewide “decline to sign” campaign.